QOTD: Do Indian elite care for polls?

WHO CARES? Experts say the urban middle class feels isolated from election issues.

        

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On Thursday, voters from 10 municipal corporations across Maharashtra came out to cast their ballot in a keenly-contested election.

Several very interesting voting patterns emerged from across the state, specially from India’s financial capital Mumbai where it’s a close battle between the Shiv Sena-BJP combine and the Congress-NCP, fighting it out for India’s richest municipal body - the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

Voters came out to exercise their franchise in the posh as well as middle and lower-middle class areas.

BMC controls the day-to-day existence of over 120 million people, has an annual turnover of Rs 12,000 crore.

Many civic watchdogs bodies in Mumbai held campaigns on the performance of the corporators and urged Mumbaikars to exercise their right to vote.

But though Mumbai – cutting across class-lines - came out to vote, the larger picture across India shows a disturbing trend, an indication of how apathetic urban India is towards elections.

Number blunder

In 2004 Lok Sabha elections, compared to an overall national average of 58 per cent, Delhi recorded a voter turnout of just 47 per cent, Mumbai was at 47.1 per cent, Chennai’s voting percentage was 47.5 per cent, Bangalore was at 51 per cent the only saving grace was Kolkata, which saw huge voter turnout of 70 per cent.

As Maharashtra gears up for the poll results, it’s perhaps apt to question if the urban elite is increasingly becoming a non-voting class?

That was the topic of discussion on the show Face The Nation on Thursday.

With CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose conducting the show, on the panel to lead the discussion were celebrity quizmaster Derek O’Brien, former chief election commissioner T S Krishnamurthy and animal right activist Ambika Shukla.

Arguing that in India that it’s essentially poor of India who go out to vote, T S Krishnamurthy said that in urban areas, there are certain amount of indifference mainly because people don’t to spend some time to go to polling stations to exercise their votes.

“People should realise that every vote is an important vote and voting is not a waste of time. Although there is a sign of slight change, but despite the Election Commission spreading message, large number of voters don’t seems to be taking active interest,” said Krishnamurthy.